The last time I updated the CPU/memory/motherboard on my gaming rig was in 2007, switching from Windows XP to Windows Vista. Since then I switched out the dual-core processor for a quad-core processor, replaced the PSU and video card, and went from Windows Vista to 7 to 8 to 8.1. After eight years, it might be time to replace the underlying hardware for Windows 10. I can only deal with so much stagnation between major hardware upgrades.
AMD Phenom X4 840 3.2GHz (added two years ago, replacing a X2 processor)
Gigabyte AMD 690-chipset mATX motherboard
G.Skill 4GB DDR2 800MHz RAM (two sticks)
Seagate 1TB hard drive
Nvidia Geforce 720 1GB video card (added last month, a temporary replacement for a dead ATI 7960 video card)
Diablo Tek 600W PSU (added last year, replacing a failing 7-year-old PSU)
The last major hardware upgrade (CPU/memory/motherboard) took place in 2007 to switch over from Windows XP to Windows Vista. Since then I've ran Windows 7 for several years, updated to Windows 8 last year and Windows 8.1 this year. Planning to replace CPU/memory/motherboard before upgrading to Windows 10.
The girls from my seventh grade class told me I came from a "poor family" because my parents got me a Commodore VIC-20 and not an Apple II for Christmas in 1983, and since we didn't have cable TV I didn't know what MTV was all about. If that wasn't bad enough, I had to read BYTE Magazine at the library. I'ts a miracle that I'm a senior system admin 30 years later.
If you enjoy 1970's technology, try translating BASIC games into Python. That's an exercise in unraveling spaghetti code, chasing GOTO statements, and figuring out what parts of the code was to get around hardware limitations.
Funny how after all that fear-mongering it ended up being Apple who is dominating personal computing with drab gray/black/white computers, tablets and phones where everybody has the same in a 1984-style.
The 1980's and 1990's were dominated by PCs that came in one color and one color only: beige. If you don't like the current monochromatic regime, visit an Apple Store to see the new color scheme of gold, silver and space gray.
I saw a large site that had a lot of XP workstations and the IT manager didn't push too hard to get Windows 7 licensing. Right before XP went out of maintenance he got a large expense approved to not only upgrade to Windows 7 but to actually replace all of the workstations. I saw the same thing with Windows 2000 and a company using that as an excuse to get into virtualization and purchase all that hardware.
Operating systems and hardware upgrades go hand-in-hand from my experience on a few PC refresh projects in recent years. Not a big surprise considering that the hardware that ran XP/2000 probably had a 32-bit processor, small hard drives and 4GB or less in RAM. It's cheaper to go with newer hardware than upgrading a system that's five or more years out of date.
I wasn't a developer, I was a lead tester. The schedules were made from up on high and pushed down to the rest of us. Since I didn't get bonuses, I didn't care about programmers weeping in their beers about the new BMW that they couldn't afford.
Also keep in mind all of the schedules were unrealistic.
Most schedules are tied to achieving a specific milestones AND bonus rewards. As a lead tester, I would add two months to the expected code release date and plan my testing schedule accordingly. Everyone screamed bloody murder that my code release dates were unrealistic because that often meant no one got bonuses. As I didn't get bonuses, I didn't care. My code release dates were the most accurate (+/- two weeks).
The average enterprise software developer spends years working 8 hours a day fattening his 401k
After three years of being a video game tester, I became a lead tester and I spent the next three years going to back to school to learn computer programming. Despite working 80 hours a week for two to four weeks at a time, I was branded as not a "team player" by management because I had an exit strategy. After I left the video game industry, I spent the last ten years in help desk and desktop support roles, making more money for less hours than I did as a game tester. I'm now a senior system admin in computer security.
If your company is just being cheap bastards, then you deserve all the hacks, viruses, and spyware you get.
Last summer I had an interview at a multi-billion-dollar corporation (that factoid got mentioned a dozen times over), where the IT department routinely had a malware outbreaks and had to manually disinfect each system. I asked them why they weren't using Malwarebytes Anti-Malware scanner to clean up their systems. The multi-billion-dollar corporation couldn't associate itself with a small company like Malwarebytes, as it would inflate Malwarebyte's valuation in the stock market. Hence, the techs spent more time cleaning up systems than anything else. The hiring manager was offended that I turned him down for another job that paid $8/hr more for doing less work on a much larger network.
We've raised a nation of people who were indoctrinated with the idea that they can do anything, or be anything that they want. We told them that their ideas were important. We lied.
I was misdiagnosed as being mentally retarded and spent my school years in Special Ed classes. Every time I blew out the evaluation exams on the genius side of the scale, my teachers called it a statistical fluke. If I'm in the Special Ed program, I must be an idiot. They told me as much. Of course, I never believed them. I had to drop out of school after the 8th grade before I could enter college as an adult. Meanwhile, all the normal students were lied to about how much of a special snow flake they were.
I worked for a video game company prior to the dot com bust. Had the awesome job maintaining the QA department's equipment inventory. When the company went on a buying spree and paying two to four times actual value for each company, I was on the receiving end of the surplus equipment that came from consolidating operations. All of it was crap. The company ran out of money to buy more companies and started selling off the acquired companies as the CEO's "every title for every platform" strategy tanked in the marketplace. Those were the days.
My work has so many computers that the I.T. department can't locate them all in multiple buildings. If they have to locate a particular computer, they often use a bar code scanner to scan each computer room by room, download the data to a spreadsheet, and hope to find a match with the asset tag. Since they're doing a PC refresh, the new computers have active WIFI tags glued to the case to make it easier to map out and find these computers.
When I went back to school to learn computer programming after the dot com bust in 2001, the expectation for the coming decades was an acute shortage of skilled I.T. workers in the United States. Mostly because the baby boomers are retiring and the South Asian countries would keep their workers at home to drive their own economy.
The Great Recession messed that up. The baby boomers can't retire, so I'm fighting off all these old geezers for tech jobs over the last six years. The South Asian economies are stalling out and still sending workers over here.
I switched over to computer security since that field requires 10+ years in general I.T. experience, leaving help desk and desktop jobs to everyone else. As a 45YO male, I'm one of the youngest on the security team. I only got another 30 years before I can retire. Whoo-hoo!
Generally, weapons aren't allowed in a school zone. If he was a white person, he could have asserted his 2nd amendment rights. If he was a black person, the police would kill first and ask questions later.
Slashdot Mirror
The last time I updated the CPU/memory/motherboard on my gaming rig was in 2007, switching from Windows XP to Windows Vista. Since then I switched out the dual-core processor for a quad-core processor, replaced the PSU and video card, and went from Windows Vista to 7 to 8 to 8.1. After eight years, it might be time to replace the underlying hardware for Windows 10. I can only deal with so much stagnation between major hardware upgrades.
The last major hardware upgrade (CPU/memory/motherboard) took place in 2007 to switch over from Windows XP to Windows Vista. Since then I've ran Windows 7 for several years, updated to Windows 8 last year and Windows 8.1 this year. Planning to replace CPU/memory/motherboard before upgrading to Windows 10.
The girls from my seventh grade class told me I came from a "poor family" because my parents got me a Commodore VIC-20 and not an Apple II for Christmas in 1983, and since we didn't have cable TV I didn't know what MTV was all about. If that wasn't bad enough, I had to read BYTE Magazine at the library. I'ts a miracle that I'm a senior system admin 30 years later.
Smells like New Math to me? I had to go to college learn math the proper way.
If you enjoy 1970's technology, try translating BASIC games into Python. That's an exercise in unraveling spaghetti code, chasing GOTO statements, and figuring out what parts of the code was to get around hardware limitations.
Did you bring dip with your chips?
Funny how after all that fear-mongering it ended up being Apple who is dominating personal computing with drab gray/black/white computers, tablets and phones where everybody has the same in a 1984-style.
The 1980's and 1990's were dominated by PCs that came in one color and one color only: beige. If you don't like the current monochromatic regime, visit an Apple Store to see the new color scheme of gold, silver and space gray.
Multiple hard drive failures will do that.
I saw a large site that had a lot of XP workstations and the IT manager didn't push too hard to get Windows 7 licensing. Right before XP went out of maintenance he got a large expense approved to not only upgrade to Windows 7 but to actually replace all of the workstations. I saw the same thing with Windows 2000 and a company using that as an excuse to get into virtualization and purchase all that hardware.
Operating systems and hardware upgrades go hand-in-hand from my experience on a few PC refresh projects in recent years. Not a big surprise considering that the hardware that ran XP/2000 probably had a 32-bit processor, small hard drives and 4GB or less in RAM. It's cheaper to go with newer hardware than upgrading a system that's five or more years out of date.
There are two kinds of Republicans: billionaires and Fox News chumps.
FTFY
I wasn't a developer, I was a lead tester. The schedules were made from up on high and pushed down to the rest of us. Since I didn't get bonuses, I didn't care about programmers weeping in their beers about the new BMW that they couldn't afford.
By the time they find out it's too late, they're burned out, about to be replaced and with no safety net whatsoever.
This is when they figured out that they blew all their overtime pay on worthless video game gear and toys.
And that right there is how you knew you were in a pile of shit*.
If you're a video game tester, you're always looking for a pony or unicorn to ride out of the muck.
Also keep in mind all of the schedules were unrealistic.
Most schedules are tied to achieving a specific milestones AND bonus rewards. As a lead tester, I would add two months to the expected code release date and plan my testing schedule accordingly. Everyone screamed bloody murder that my code release dates were unrealistic because that often meant no one got bonuses. As I didn't get bonuses, I didn't care. My code release dates were the most accurate (+/- two weeks).
The average enterprise software developer spends years working 8 hours a day fattening his 401k
After three years of being a video game tester, I became a lead tester and I spent the next three years going to back to school to learn computer programming. Despite working 80 hours a week for two to four weeks at a time, I was branded as not a "team player" by management because I had an exit strategy. After I left the video game industry, I spent the last ten years in help desk and desktop support roles, making more money for less hours than I did as a game tester. I'm now a senior system admin in computer security.
If your company is just being cheap bastards, then you deserve all the hacks, viruses, and spyware you get.
Last summer I had an interview at a multi-billion-dollar corporation (that factoid got mentioned a dozen times over), where the IT department routinely had a malware outbreaks and had to manually disinfect each system. I asked them why they weren't using Malwarebytes Anti-Malware scanner to clean up their systems. The multi-billion-dollar corporation couldn't associate itself with a small company like Malwarebytes, as it would inflate Malwarebyte's valuation in the stock market. Hence, the techs spent more time cleaning up systems than anything else. The hiring manager was offended that I turned him down for another job that paid $8/hr more for doing less work on a much larger network.
We've raised a nation of people who were indoctrinated with the idea that they can do anything, or be anything that they want. We told them that their ideas were important. We lied.
I was misdiagnosed as being mentally retarded and spent my school years in Special Ed classes. Every time I blew out the evaluation exams on the genius side of the scale, my teachers called it a statistical fluke. If I'm in the Special Ed program, I must be an idiot. They told me as much. Of course, I never believed them. I had to drop out of school after the 8th grade before I could enter college as an adult. Meanwhile, all the normal students were lied to about how much of a special snow flake they were.
I worked for a video game company prior to the dot com bust. Had the awesome job maintaining the QA department's equipment inventory. When the company went on a buying spree and paying two to four times actual value for each company, I was on the receiving end of the surplus equipment that came from consolidating operations. All of it was crap. The company ran out of money to buy more companies and started selling off the acquired companies as the CEO's "every title for every platform" strategy tanked in the marketplace. Those were the days.
Hey, leave Radio Shack out of this!
The 90's had napkins for bad startup ideas, tens of millions of them. ;)
My work has so many computers that the I.T. department can't locate them all in multiple buildings. If they have to locate a particular computer, they often use a bar code scanner to scan each computer room by room, download the data to a spreadsheet, and hope to find a match with the asset tag. Since they're doing a PC refresh, the new computers have active WIFI tags glued to the case to make it easier to map out and find these computers.
Will this skilled worker shortage ever end?
When I went back to school to learn computer programming after the dot com bust in 2001, the expectation for the coming decades was an acute shortage of skilled I.T. workers in the United States. Mostly because the baby boomers are retiring and the South Asian countries would keep their workers at home to drive their own economy.
The Great Recession messed that up. The baby boomers can't retire, so I'm fighting off all these old geezers for tech jobs over the last six years. The South Asian economies are stalling out and still sending workers over here.
I switched over to computer security since that field requires 10+ years in general I.T. experience, leaving help desk and desktop jobs to everyone else. As a 45YO male, I'm one of the youngest on the security team. I only got another 30 years before I can retire. Whoo-hoo!
Which would explain the bird flu epidemic in the Midwest. I thought H1B contractors in Silicon Valley were bad.
http://fusion.net/story/144406/your-eggs-are-so-expensive-because-bird-flu-just-wiped-out-45-million-chickens-and-turkeys/
The cops would ask the stromtrooper to take his helmet off and make a split-second decision.
Generally, weapons aren't allowed in a school zone. If he was a white person, he could have asserted his 2nd amendment rights. If he was a black person, the police would kill first and ask questions later.